100794-character-progression-is-needlessly-complex
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- What gets me is: players know this is what the devs want, but still complain when adjustments move reality towards this direction. Consider rune slots as an example. People are screaming "the devs are clueless because they're giving us rune slots besides fire and fusion!". At some point, fire and fusion runes will not actually be (much?) better than other types of runes... and people will scream about that. | |} ---- ---- ---- I'm not understanding your point. Why is Wildstar's system superior? Why do these things take time to figure out? In my opinion the benefits of the complexity are far outweighed by the detriments. The more beneficial choices should be obvious. Isn't it silly to contend otherwise? MMOs seem to be one of the few game genres where developers can get away with unclear rules. Who would play Street Fighter if the actual damage was based on inscrutable calculations and RNG? Players need to know the rules or we are all just playing some weird version of Calvinball. Even your list doesn't seem to support your point. Non-ambigious combat is is a win in skill based play. The more factors that come in to the equation, the less skill is required and the more simulation-like it becomes. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- But spreadsheets are fun =< | |} ---- As it happens I did play Magic, around the time Revised edition came out. I'm glad you mention it, because its a perfect example of why overly complex rules and ambiguous mechanics are bad. Few and far between were the games that didn't involve busting out that horrid rule booklet to make a point about what part of the turn an interrupt could be cast vs. a sorcery, or when one could tap something for a special ability. Most of the pickup games I played dispensed with the cumbersome turn phases entirely in favor of playing at a reasonable speed. Look no further than Hearthstone if you want to see all those problems fixed. Blizzard certainly didn't expand on the concept, they chopped the rules of the game down to minuscule size. Why? Because ambiguity is bad. Because in order to have a feeling of control, players need to fit the entire game into their heads and think it through five turns from now. In MMOs, players invest a serious amount of time into their character. The developers designed the progression paths, so why is it that if you want to tank with the warrior you have to take so many AMPs from the Assault branch in order to be effective, for example? Didn't they design the Tech branch to make better tanks? How could it possibly be that AMP abilities like Bolstering Strike are not clearly better than Relentless Strikes, the very first warrior skill? | |} ---- I guess if your like the mad gamer scientist type.. :D | |} ---- You mean that ambiguity is bad for you, that you need to think through five turns...right? RPGs are chaotic by their very nature, and this is especially true when you have people in them (You dont know what chaos is if you have never played a table top RPG.) If you need order in your games then go find an established strategy game and like minded people. I am so fricken tired of people trying to turn Football into Soccer. | |} ---- ---- ---- Getting adequate doesn't require math. Even getting "pretty good" doesn't require math. Absolutely squeezing out every ounce of performance? That requires math here, just like it does in... almost everything. | |} ---- ---- Here is the first problem. You expect that a game as soon as you load in to be giving you the "optimal".... games are a learning experience always have been, always will be. As you play and more experienced with them you learn what works and what doesn't. If you expect to be lead around by the tooth, I suggest you quit playing video games. You should be loading in to the game, saying hey let me experience this...learn how to do this....Okay I got that down, how can I get better.... If your first thought is.... okay game designer tell me what to do and how to make it the best.... then like I said.. quit playing games. | |} ---- Sorceries are your turn only, interrupts(removed for years now) and instants are largely anytime. Tapping can be done anytime as an instant. If you couldn't learn that, I dunno, maybe the game wasn't for you. Hearthstone is actually on par with depth, especially with newer Naxxramas cards; the depth is just largely downplayed or hidden by the clean automation of the game cycling thru the priorities of effects and math for you. When you have a battlecry effect triggering a secret, which then kills a deathrattle creature, you don't have to take out a rulebook as in Magic because the game is doing all the footwork for you, but it's just as complicated. You still see people surprised at how a situation doesn't play out as they expected in streams and youtube clips. | |} ---- Can't play strategy games either... since new players still need to learn what strategies work and what don't. The OP just wants a "movie" experience... I don't want to make an choices, I just want to be told what to do. | |} ---- Bless you, Heroclix. | |} ---- Sorry did you have a point? The elitism is so thick I can't see it. What you seem to be saying is that you would rather play American football than dodgeball because the rules are more difficult to understand. This makes you feel good because you had to invest time to gain that understanding. My question is whether this is intended by the developers or not. I think many are missing the fact that there is an actual game to be played here, separate from min/maxing. That game is fun, and would be fun without much of the oddly complex character building. As RustyP has said, the developers have control of all the variables. This is a designed system. Simplifying the system would not only aid player understanding, it would go a long way toward balancing the classes, something most on these boards have interest in. | |} ---- Again you fail to see the issue is you. Everything you need is there IN GAME. You want to the DEV's to tell you... "Hey if you use skill A... make sure you take amp B" ... if you can't figure that out by reading the information presented IN GAME... you need to just stop playing video games. There is nothing complex or convoluted about the regular game.... runes may be a little more complex but once you start learning what is going on... it is still easy. You don't need to do research to play this game... YOU as an individual are complaining that the DEV's aren't telling YOU how to develop your character the best. | |} ---- ---- I thought it was rather clear that I am questioning the complexity of the character progression in the game. Keeping it all as is and having a developer just say "this is the best way" is kind of strange. If they know the most effective builds, why not just design the game so that they are obvious? I really don't see a good reason to hide this kind of info. In the end there are only 4 roles to play, no matter what class you choose. | |} ---- Except they don't know the most effective builds. That's why they have to bug fix and buff and nerf abilities because players keep finding new ways to be OP. Anytime you give players a choice between one or more abilities, talents, or pieces of gear, some players will research the shit out of it to figure out which is most optimal/OP. | |} ---- I think the problem is that you are seeing the system as it is and not as it would be, according to the devs. What I mean is the INTENT is for a player to have choices; to wit there is not a single optimal build, but rather a range of optimal builds contingent upon the situation. Granted, this is a difficult thing to achieve and from what I have seen in the past, success is rare. None-the-less, I would prefer a 'flavor of the month' style approach over a 'single optimal build' approach. It keeps things interesting, and allows variations. Is it a perfect system? No, but personally I find it interesting. Yes it sucks when your class gets nerfed into the ground, but that is the life of an MMO with build choices. I would argue that this would exist even under the single optimal build model. I am a big fan of theory crafting threads despite being casual scum so I don't mind doing the work. Having said that, I think there is definitely room for improvement. I think there should be more clarity on the paper doll about a given stat. Strikethrough is a great example; can I hit a veteran dungeon boss? How about a raid boss? How often will I miss? But that information will come from, you guessed it, theory crafting threads :) | |} ---- great response, food for thought. | |} ---- ---- Ah yes, we didn't even get into this bit. The stat caps are particularly silly. I curious how those end up in a game thats only a couple months old, they didn't appear in EQ until several years in as far as I recall (though that was a long time ago). Don't they hand out the best available gear so it can be tested in beta? Another element that is left for the players to discover is the abilities on the global cool down timer vs. err.. not global? Wouldn't everything be much more straightforward if there were no exceptions to the GCD? If the exceptions are things like "can be cast after a critical hit/dodge" then that makes sense I guess. | |} ---- You make some good points. I suspect that you are correct about the development philosophy; a range of choices for different situations. I respect that. It seems to make the most sense given the information we have. Given that, I would work from simplicity. One cannot keep adding variables willy nilly and magically have balance or clarity. This is a classic MMO, so DPS, Heals, Tank. Ultimately thats all there is. So the stat priority for each should be Attack Power, Healing Power, Health respectively. In an ideal system, the full range of each stat would be known from 0 to some cap. The strategy of building a character should come into play after the player starts to run into play based problems by narrow focus; DPS dying due to lack of health, tank losing threat due to health focus, etc. I think thats when the "range of other options" should come into play. The best builds would then be the ones that can keep their core stat closest to the max while also retaining some utility. Players would know that the more points they spend in the non-core stat, the more specialized they are, and the more potentially vulnerable. Unfortunately that kind of model relies on the variables being known. Adding the ability to go higher than the cap or giving the player the ability to allocate endless amounts of points over time will break the system. | |} ---- | |} ---- Ok I normally don't weigh in on these conversations but it's the nature of the genre. What most like to forget is the RPG part of MMORPG. These games evolved from the old text based MUD games that evolved from standard pen and paper role-playing games. The ambiguity exists because not all people are the same and neither should any character. Now I don't in game role play much anymore, but Wildstar and the morning coffee guys are pulling me back in, but you're not supposed to play a role-playing game but use it as an escape. A way to live another life you normally can't. Now there is no infallible way of doing this and I doubt there will ever be so numbers and stats are used in place. Naturally there will be min/maxers, number crunchers, etc. and there is a place for them. I for one don't enjoy theorycrafting. Now I've always been anti-meta minded. I'll do the odd builds or the goofy builds to have fun. Most of it had to fit my character concept since I was into role-play heavy until a few years ago. Even with those builds I always put up top dps or at least respectable, I kept my friends alive, and I kept aggro depending on what I was doing. I even reached marshal in the old honor system with a troll build and a dumb character concept on a gnome warrior. Sure, some were unbearable and I ditched the build but the problem comes from when people view things as a game and not a separate self. Even now as I play my warrior isn't a character, he is me on a different world living a life I can't on this one. It's not ambiguity it's traits and flaws that make a personality. | |} ---- |} This response is essentially an appeal to authority; it is this way because that's what the developers wanted. I don't see anything about why it should be that way. In fact, look at that, I've pointed out problems with the way things are in the very first post. Two points I’ll address in here though. First up is the “inherent chaos” of RPGs. You are correct that true RPGs are chaotic, because they are based on a story being told by a person. The mechanics of the game (dice rolls, card draws) are designed purely to develop the story and make it interesting, they provide the outcomes to the players choices and the GM’s setup. Wildstar is not an RPG. The interaction is one-way, player to system. The story is immutable, which makes it essentially worthless when compared to a table top or live RPG, where the story is paramount. Those chaos mechanics don’t perform their most important functions anymore; deciding story outcomes and creating interesting situations. So why include randomness at all? I like the car example also, because as you point out, my car did not just pop into existence, it was very intentionally designed. My car was designed so that I don't have to think about how it works. In fact, tons of effort was put into the design so that I can just get behind the wheel and drive from point A to point B. I have to think about the route I'm going to take and the other drivers on the road, but I don't have to think about which pedal does what, how the steering is going to work today, or whether the engine can push the car up to the speed limit. This is what people expect from things that are designed, but not MMOs apparently. In my MMO car, pressing the gas gets me up to 30mph, then I have to read the forums to find the right combination of pedal pushing and wheel turning to go past that. Which forces me to think about how my car works, or if it is in fact operating correctly. | |} ----